Excellent Hands-on, Literature-Based Science Curriculum for Kindergarten

I was compensated for my time and provided with a copy of this curriculum for review purposes, but all opinions expressed are my own.

Young children are amazed by science! To them it must seem like magic; so often it does to me too despite knowing how it works. To keep them enraptured with the subject of science, you have to make sure they are getting to experience it rather than just listen to it. Sonlight Science K does just that for the little ones just getting into formal schooling.

#DiscoverandDo Science with Sonlight Science K. #SonlightScience engages learners through living literature and related hands-on activities.

Sonlight Science K is a book based science curriculum designed to encourage 5-6 year-olds to discover and do science! In fact, Sonlight offers science curricula for other ages as well with the same aim, discover and do. Learn the science and then apply that knowledge to a hands-on activity. Make science come alive!

Things to Love about #SonlightScience K

Hands-on
Book based
Introduces a lot of variety of subjects
Children are not expected to write
Christian but does not ignore the Theory of Evolution
Videos are engaging
4 day schedule

Dive Deeper into Sonlight Science

My absolute favorite thing about this curriculum is how hands-on it is. The kids are doing a small project once a week and a larger project once a week. With a 4-day school week, that is hands-on learning half of the days they are doing science!

Another great thing about Sonlight Science is when you purchase the curriculum, you get a box with all the strange supplies you may need to complete these hands-on projects as well. You provide basic supplies, so far I have had them all in my house, so no extra trips to the store.

The Discover & Do Science Book included provides very detailed instructions on how to perform each experiment as well as discussion questions and even activities to do if the experiment involves waiting.

My second favorite part of this (and all Sonlight curricula) is that it is book-based. I am a total sucker for books, and want my kids to read them all! I love how Sonlight has related the experiments directly to the weekly readings. This is not just the case for the kindergarten curriculum either; all Sonlight Science has become more interconnected, so the books provide information for the experiments.

#DiscoverandDo Activities Connect with Books

Below you can peek inside the instructors manual, Discover and Do experiment book, and the Usborne Reptiles book to see how they all relate to our favorite experiment so far!

Back to Reasons to Love Sonlight Science

Hope you enjoyed the peek at our color changing reptile experiment above, but let's get back to the topic at hand, reasons you'll love Sonlight Science.

Sonlight is a Christian curriculum but does not ignore the Theory of Evolution. I have always been a believer in introducing these ideas along with our arguments against them, so kids will not be blind sided when they first hear about them.

However they do note in the teacher's guide when a controversial topic is coming in the reading as well as when the reading may not be entirely correct scientifically.

Sonlight Science K is sure to intrigue kids with a variety of interests as it introduces a variety of topics including wildlife, ecosystems, weather patterns, meteorology, simple machines, and physics. It does this all through living books and hands-on experiments rather than textbooks!

This curriculum does contain some little activity sheets to use for review after the daily reading. These are not monotonous busy work! They even worked in some fine motor skills with cutting and gluing. My daughter loved doing these, but she only did the matching and multiple choice questions alone. The curriculum specifically mentions having your child dictate fill in the blank questions to you as their teacher, and you write it down. This saves so much frustration when these little ones aren't quite ready for lots of writing, but it still allows you to assess their knowledge.

Sonlight offers videos of each of the experiments as well. All of my kids snuck in to watch them too; they thought they were just hilarious. We tried watching these before and after performing the experiment, and surprisingly, I think watching them before got my kindergartner even more excited and ready to do the experiment. It must have empowered her to feel like she knew what she was doing.

I love that this curriculum is a 4 day school week as well! It is so nice to be able to use that extra day as a break, or for co-op, or field trips, or even a make-up day if needed. You do have the option of a 5-day curriculum if you need the extra structured day in your homeschool.